Matt Bacon

Guest presenting, at Ken's invitation. You know the rules: year, make and model by PM to me before end of day Friday. No reverse image search... And that would be a 1994-1999 Caterham 21. Similar underneath to your more familiar-looking Lotus 7-alike Caterhams but with a nice curvy body on top. Sadly, also a heavier body, which did nothing for performance...

This showed up today: I've wanted one for years, and now it's been paid for by money for a car modelling magazine article, so I can justify it! best, M.

Just be aware that the Airfix kit isn't exactly 1/24, so your interior will need some adjustment to fit. Thanks to the type of construction, which is designed to be plug-compatible (see what I did there?) with a well-known make of construction bricks, it's 1/26 in one direction and 1/22.5 in the other (I can't remember which one is which). That said, it's by far the best plastic construction kit of the P1 that there is... bestest, M.

Makes me wonder... did anyone EVER successfully pull off the "Classic European styling with bulletprood American reliability?" Facel Vega, Iso Grifo or Jensen Interceptor, maybe...? The Cobra and GT40 are the ur-beasts in this respect, but the Cobra lost the European styling somewhere along the way, and the GT40 was never really homologated as a road car. I suspect there's a philosophical mis-match between American engines and European chassis, which no amount of curvy bodywork can smooth over... bestest, M.

...I think you're missing the point, slightly... ;-P ..and there are only four pieces that didn't already exist in Lego... best, M.

http://www.lego.com/en-gb/technic/porsche-911-gt3-rs Keep your Pochers... this has 2,700 parts and is "only" £250... I want! best, M.

I'm sure there were Ike Asimov stories where people were prosecuted for driving cars on "manual"... Surely the only way this works (for at least a few decades) is if the human "driver" is always responsible for the behaviour of "their" car? It's gonna be a while before cars are smarter than horses, given that the current state of AI is about at ant level, if that... The biggest factor is going to be communication, not intelligence. As Tom says, it's the ability of one vehicle to tell all the others around it if there's a problem developing. And the ability of a "cloud" computer somewhere to learn from the behaviour of all cars in the same place over months and years. To take a specific example: cruise control. In the 50s/60s, you had a cruise control that held a specific speed. By the 80s you had one that had a "default" speed that it returned to even when you speeded up or slowed down with the pedals. In the 90s my Mondeo accelerated when you pressed the gas pedal, and slowed down when you braked, and held whatever speed you ended up at. Nowadays, they use the front parking sensors (and maybe radar) to lock onto the speed of the car in front and track it. Tomorrow they'll get a feed of "I'm thinking this...." from the cars in front, and those behind, and adapt their driving style accordingly. It's still a smart robot, though... ...when they start to think "I think this guy's a bit timid, I'll overtake him, but I'm not going to be tempted into a drag race with this idiot over here..." THAT'LL be AI... bestets, M.

Great build, Curtis. This is one of those great kits that not enough people build. Super-cool original, and a fabulous build of a beautifully engineered kit as well... Alfaholics would be proud! best, M. (though I don't know how you resisted the big snake for the bonnet/hood!)

I dunno, I think they've got this look down pat: I like it... At least, if someone makes the transkit, there's an obvious "retro" livery to go for! best, M.

I really hope someone will do a transkit for the upcoming Revell AMG-GT: ... and that Zero and Scale Finishes will do the green... best, M.

but some of the defense was that you can hear the same chords and the same sequence in classical and folk guitar music going back centuries. The verdict wasn't about whether they sounded the same, it was about whether Paige and Plant had infringed copyright on _published_ music. best, M.

That's dye chemistry. The chemical in the stripper is (probably) oxidising something in the paint. Same reason white paint can yellow with age (not just absorbing horribles from the air...) And does it matter if the red is a separate _pigment_ coming through the base coat, or "molten" plastic? It's still red stuff surfacing in the clear coat. BTW, polystyrene is inherently transparent. As you'll have noticed when cutting clear parts off the trees, it's also rather brittle. To make it more tractable, it is "filled" with inert material (like talc), and coloured with dyes. I'm doing a little experiment... best, M.

This is what I think is happening in the case of the two I've experienced: Both were painted the same way -- Tamiya white fine surface primer, then the Zero Paints 2K system. The primer, being a primer, is designed to provide a "key" for paint layers above, and the base coat paint goes one quite rough, and matt, again by design, to give a base for the clear coat that allows it to spread and level without running. I think that means that both the primer and the basecoat are, at the microscopic level, porous. I think that the thinner in the 2K clearcoat mix "soaks into" the basecoat and primer layer. If you've ever done "chromatography" in science, you'll have put a drop of ink onto a solvent soaked piece of filter paper, and watched capillary action separate the ink into its component colours as it diffuses and spreads across the paper. I think that the same is happening here -- the red dye from the plastic is diffusing through the thinner soaked basecoat layer, and into the clear, and then settling with clear as it slumps into the nooks and crannies... bestest, M.

You're just not looking at the pictures I posted. Explain to me in any way how "not opaque enough" would account for the gathering of the red tint in the creases and on the ledges of the body, when you can see clearly in the picture in the IPA that the white primer underneath in those places is covering completely. IPA on its own will leach the colour from Italeri red plastic eventually, as I discovered whilst soaking the 275 GTB, which had to go for weeks because the paint and clear was throughly cured, not freshly applied. The liquid was red tinted, not the yellow of the paint, which came of in lumps, eventually... best, M.

And that small spot on the rear bumper is clearly somewhere I didn't get enough layers on. best, M.

WRONG! There is such a thing as "red bleed". This is it: You can see clearly the "orange" tint along the creases in the left side of the body, above the rear wheel arch flare and below the fuel filler, at the front right of the roof and at the left side of the hood. IPA taking the clear coat and paint off. You can see on the real left door that the white primer has no red showing through in the crease, where yu can clearly see the orange tint. The greeny yellow stuff is the sealer. I hade the same thing happen with an Italeri Ferrari 275 GTB. It's not "too thin paint", it's the clear coat leaching dye from the red body plastic. You may choose to believe that it doesn't happen, but it happened o me... bestest, M.

Plastic colour certainly DOES bleed through primer and basecoat, sometimes, anyway. I've had two builds where I had to strip the model right back to bare plastic and start again when the 2K Clear Coat was tinted by the underlying plastic colour. In both cases the paint job was yellow over a red plastic body. You could see the red-tinted clear making the body look orange in areas where it was gathering slightly (recesses and the base of some panels). I bought some dedicated Zero Paints sealer, and now I use it first -- but only on builds with red plastic and a paler final colour (white or yellow). bestest, M.

...well, it beat the nearest Ferrari, which is kinda the bar they set themselves. It's the closest you'll get to a "win on Sunday sell on Monday" class these days... LMP1/2 is whole different ball game. The unsung heroes of this year's battle are the Alpine/Nissan guys -- 1st in the LMP2 class first time out (for a good few years, anyway). bestest, M.

http://www.autoweek.com/article/24-hours-le-mans/posche-ford-gt-win-24-hours-le-mans Well done to Chip Ganassi and the whole team of engineers and drivers. Couldn't have turned out better for the big anniversary! best, M.

Really good. Still one of the coolest cars ever made... bestest, M.

Fantastic build and lovely photos. One to be really, really, proud of! best, M.

I'd figured it for something new and retro-styled (the Morgan Aeromax with coachwork by Saoutchik look), but I couldn't find the darn thing. I was trying to think what existing platform had that extreme ratio of the distances from the rear wheels to driver vs driver to front wheels... bestest, M.

Lovely job... You can see how it's the "missing link" between the 250LM and 330P, can't you? bestest, M.

I'm seriously looking forward to what these babies will do at Le Mans this year (and if I'm really lucky, I might be there to see them do it...). The Martini is super cool, as always. (...though the nit picker in me wants to say that it's a DIFFuser, as in something that spreads out the air coming from underneath, not a DEfuser, as in something that stops the air making a big bang, or stops it having an impact/effect) bestest, M.

Please don't Jim... the more the merrier! I like your retro wheels, and Gulf colours are always welcome (I've got a Porsche 918 headed in that direction...) I havered over how to do the carbon bits, but in the end just went for the graphite grey -- I couldn't see any weave in photos until you got REALLY close-up. Did you find the mirrors a bit of a trial? It took me a couple of tries to get a basecoat that would stick reliably to the softer plastic. I did fill the door seam and the one where the top of the rear deck meets the outer sides of the "channels". I could have done it better, and would recommend taking a bit of time over it to anyone else building one of these. This was a weekend build to keep my modelling mojo ticking over, because I'm working away most of the week at present and modelling opportunities are pretty scarce! bestest, M.